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WTC 7's sudden onset and symmetrical collapse at actual free fall acceleration is indicative of controlled demolition much more than minor fires on limited floors could somehow cause the thousands of steel flanges to fail simultaneously throughout the building, the necessary condition to achieve symmetrical free fall acceleration. The Twin Towers disintegrated explosively, in both cases virtually identically, in 10 to 15 seconds, nearly free fall acceleration. Worcester Polytechnic Institute and FEMA metallurgy examination of steel from WTC 7 found evidence of eutectic reactions, unprecedented in office building fires, common in buildings brought down by controlled demolition. The National Institutes of Standards and Technology by its own admission did not test for explosive residues because they said "such tests would not necessarily have been conclusive." It is very likely the people that brought down the three towers in NYC were American citizens. Bush's "global war on terror" needed a "new Pearl Harbor" to get the American Congress and people behind it. Al Qaeda's (literally) impossible plot provided a perfect opportunity, complete with airtight plausible deniability.

Letters and Words are so powerful that they can impart much great pain or pleasure on the receiving ends. Indeed, a bullet kills instantly but a word could 'kill' and hurt the feelings of an ordinary person over a longer period ot time. Both should not be encouraged or tolerated. Responsible humans must choose their words before opening their mouths.
Everyday thousands of innocent young muslim children and women and elderly die in IRAQ and SYRIA and many other places under conflict. No one mentions them, hardly or at all.
Why this double standard in the West?

Paris and New York are "metaphors of light and freedom"---not sure if the author knows what light and freedom REALLY are?!

The massacre at Charlie Hébdo is seen by many in France as its "9/11", because it will leave a scar on the French psyche for a long time. One just hopes that the authorities will learn from their mistakes and start to act.
The killings of the journalists were totally barbaric and inexcusable. The assassins have underestimated the French people's reaction to the use of violence to intimidate the public. Collective defiance and love for freedom are engraved in the French culture. The French Revolution wrote history and had an impact on the Old Continent and the New World. France had produced some of the continent's most influential thinkers - Descartes, Pascal, Montesquieu, Voltaire etc. and writers - Baudelaire, Flaubert, Sartre, Camus etc. It is the land of some of the art world most renowned artists - Renoir, Monet, Cezanne, Gauguin, Matisse and Braque etc.
The outpouring of grief and solidarity showed the French people's resolve to stand up for their freedoms and democracy. They don't want to give up the cherished tradition of satirical cartoons that goes back to the 18th century. French officials had not always been amused by the magazine's brash, provocative cartoons, that had stirred anger among the country's Muslims. Nevertheless the deaths of the journalists have rallied millions in France and many many more beyond to defend the freedoms of expression and press.
After this tragic incident the whole world will focus on France, which has the world's largest Jewish and Muslim populations. Although President Hollande has urged national unity, nobody knows how long it will last! The Front National leader Marine Le Pen made a cynical remark: "National unity is a pathetic political maneuver". The mainstream parties see the FN as a party that stigmatises Muslims and stokes fear, dismissing the "republican" values of tolerance. Indeed France is going through a highly emotional period. The country is struggling to emerge from recession since 2008. Yet the country is quite resilient after two centuries of alternating revolt, turmoil and peace. It paid a high price in both economic and human terms during the two world wars. So France will survive!

French 9/11 is the result of provocation by the newspaper whereas there was no cause, at least immediate , of American 9/11. The French 9/11 was avoidable . The Media should respect others . It was a terrorist attack or terror response to an extremist views /behaviour of the Chalie Hebdo? Soul searching is required to reach a long term peace and strategy.

Kenneth Wallenstein & Jose araujo
Your replies proved my point that writing should be good and not provoke others. If my simple analytical views provoked you think about hurting of others' religious views and beliefs. I am glad you proved my point by your comments.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Neither will a caricature. Who made the Kaouchi brothers, al Qaida, or Islam the judge, jury, and executioner in France? People who behave this way do not deserve respect, they deserve ridicule. If disrespect was the motivation, then why the attack on the grocery store? The Muslim community is deluded from cowardly accepting hateful Arab propaganda for decades. Physician, heal thyself.

I find this bizarre. While what happened in Paris was tragic and heartbreaking, yet it cannot be compared with 9/11 as a tale of two international cities. Four planes crashed in 3 States on 9/11 lives in scores of families in cities across the US and the globe were directly affected. The target was the government and the financial system.
Yes, Charlie Hebdo is a champion of satire and free speech in France. Sadly they were the target by extremists. Again, I would not draw comparisons between Hollande and Bush, for Hollande's sake. Nor would I consider targeting the economic system and the government of a country to have any similarities with targeting a private newspaper.

I understand that at this time a reasonable composure and unity of people within France is essential. There are also aspects on a global level that all of us must continue to focus on, so violence can be controlled. Sometimes what a state or nation must do for the safety and coexistence of others within a nation or nations is not the ideal to maintain control. Here is the rest which is basically a few comments from me and an article from Stratfor that I think is a critical article that addresses the side issues that Domimique Moisi addresses as a French national.

I think it is very important that I share a 2012 article from STRATFOR on this site, which follows after my introductory remarks:
It is important for all of us to recognize that reasonable focused discussion and then reasonable action is the only way to effectively correct BAD actions. It is also important to remember that there are limits to “tolerance”, and when the “STATE” must take military actions to control citizens, so that a STATE may continue to exist for a majority of citizens to live and survive peacefully.
Assaults of so-called protest are not protest. These are severe destructive actions of intolerance, and subversive to the state and its people. Its important to recognize that yes, differing states can support subversive individual terrible acts to destroy another state, again subversively.
In the meantime, all of us need to interpret and recognize really, just what social unrest is, what the geopolitical significance is for all of us internationally. We make choices everyday that can make all of us suffer to start living in more isolated ghettos with extreme varying security barriers while chaos keeps encroaching those barriers. We can either progress or we can deteriorate into mass chaos while various state efforts are attempted to control various populations worldwide. We can live in beauty or we can live in self-created disaster zones.
Reasonable respectful behavior is essential for differing peoples and ideals to co-exist. We need to put our thinking caps on, and not be blinded by even our own personal reactive, violent, opinions and behavior.
Most national governments are not true democracies, and it is very easy for any type of government to be destroyed if the citizen majorities allow themselves to deteriorate into violent mobs exhibiting only reactive unrational behavior. We can have win-win, or total loss scenarios. Think and then act with your highest ideals not your lowest. Lowest and worst actions only continue to pull others down into the mire of chaos.
We all need to recognize that history has already taught all of us that we don’t want to go there again.
When I refer to history that can be secular and nonsecular, all of the holy books and history books teach the same message. Do we today really want to relive the old lessons from the past?

Here’s the 2012 article from STRATFOR:
Significance of Social Unrest
The Geopolitical Significance of Social Unrest
September 20, 2012 | 05:57 GMT
Protests took place across the entire Eastern Hemisphere on Wednesday, from the eastern coast of Japan to the western coast of Mauritania. Protests have erupted in Japan and China over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. The Islamic world is engulfed in protests against a religiously controversial film produced in the United States. And now a French magazine's caricature of the Prophet Mohammed has provoked Muslims into directing widespread anger toward Europe.
On such a day, discussions at Stratfor turn to the geopolitical significance of social unrest, its utility in domestic and foreign policy, and the risks inherent in using such a tool. Political actors both internal and external can create such unrest, capitalize on it, be constrained by it, manipulate it to serve their own agendas or risk pitting the state apparatus against popular will.
Protests are not just tools used against governments; they can also be useful tools of statecraft. Because the threat of mob violence attracts attention to an issue, demonstrations can force a response from the side protesters are contesting. Protests are emotionally gripping because they appear to present the popular will. In a way, the act of protesting represents politics in its most primitive form. It is the direct action of the individual asserting his will against national or international forces that he could otherwise not influence. Protests evoke a Machiavellian sense of power in that they manipulate public sentiment for political gain.
What is a Geopolitical Diary?George Friedman explains.
Politicians draw on patriotism to increase nationalist sentiment and distract from domestic problems, as we are seeing currently in China and Japan. This strategy, hardening the public against a foreign enemy while increasing popular support for the domestic government, is also used effectively by states under international sanctions, such as Iran and North Korea.
Allowing a degree of anti-Western or anti-U.S. protests can increase the credibility of governments in Islamic states, where appearing to promote American or Western interests above the values of a country's Muslim constituencies can quickly turn popular support against the state. However, the reality of the international system currently is such that these same governments cannot afford to alienate the United States and its allies. For example, while newly elected Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi is working to secure a stronger political base at home, he was quick to distance the state from the protests in Cairo and extend conciliatory gestures to the United States.
Protests are inherent to the politics of the individual, and individuals can quickly move beyond the control of the government. Once a protest or demonstration has started, it's very hard to direct or quell it or even predict its trajectory. Protests are an emotionally charged means of achieving a political end. Individuals with grievances of any kind can use protests to escalate violence targeted at the government, other segments of society or foreign actors. In other words, anti-Japanese protests in China could spin out of state control and spark a new movement that threatens the state itself.
Now that French magazine Charlie Hebdo has published satirical depictions of Mohammed, European countries could be in the most politically difficult condition of all the countries currently experiencing protests. Social tensions are already running high as xenophobic sentiment has increased across Europe as a result of the economic crisis. Unemployment is at record highs, and governments across the Continent have little choice but to impose increasingly harsh austerity measures on an already struggling public as they attempt to prevent the EU system from breaking down. The imposition of such unpopular measures has already led to the collapse of multiple governments as the democratic integrity of the EU structure is being called into question. This is no easy time for any government to take an unpopular stance on other liberal values, such as freedom of speech, but with the largest Muslim population in Western Europe, Paris could be creating an opening for a battle that it currently does not have the capacity to fight.
That's the end of article. I would like to add that Paris didn't have the capacity then, and it really doesn't now. The present battle has been a skirmish that caused certain casualties. The real battle continues in the streets everyday around the world as we encounter what we want to do about practicing what we preach versus what we do.

Today, January 11, 2015, is making history in Paris with its wonderful display of people power, not the power which bullies or intimidates, but the power which springs from the hearts of people of all colours, ages and persuasions, uplifting and inspiring all who sit watching it all on their screens. How we love all these brave people who defy rain and chill to declare their faith in the values of the republic and the secular solidarity of human values which know no barriers.
Surely this is a foretaste of what can happen when enough of us are ready to demonstrate our determination to rid the world forever of war and all the insane anti-values it fosters.
Why don’t we set up a global security force to keep the peace and guard human rights?
Instead of national flags, the UN flag could fly in every barracks and military establishment and we could start repairing all the damage we are still busily augmenting - though we can never repair all the lives lost or wrecked amid the debris. There is no time to lose. See my websites at:
http://www.garrettjones.talktalk.net and
www.futureworthhaving.co.uk

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